The Love of My Afterlife(93)

When he leaves, I start thinking about romance tropes. Merritt is clearly obsessed with them, and the more I consider it, the more suspicious it seems that my Afterlife Therapist is the sister of my downstairs neighbour. That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. And why didn’t Merritt ever mention it?

I grab my phone off my bedside table and google “romance novel tropes.”

The top website tells me that the most popular romance trope is something called enemies to lovers. I read on.


The line between love and hate is gossamer thin, and nothing gets readers going like the bristling tension between enemies who you just know would have mind-blowing sex if they would only get out of their own way. The banter! The conflict! The angst! The lust!



I bite the inside of my cheek. Weird. That sounds a lot like me and Cooper. I continue reading the list, phrases like forced proximity, sharing a bed, love triangle, fake dating, and taming the womanizer popping out at me.

I throw my phone down onto the blanket, my eyebrows squishing together. Cooper and I were forced to share a bed. And with Jonah we were in a love triangle of sorts. Hmm. Before me, Cooper had a different woman visiting his flat every night. Did I tame the womanizer?

I bite my lip, my mind turning corners, scrabbling about for the pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together. Was this whole thing…Was this all a plan by Merritt to get me to date her brother? Is that the happy ever after she actually wanted? Surely not. Wouldn’t she have just sent me back with instructions to kiss Cooper? Why would she have me chase Jonah all over London? And why would she now keep Cooper in Evermore? What was it all for?

Wait…

Unless…

I gasp, my body straightening, my heart starting to gallop at the notion. Is…is she actively planning on sending him back?

That’s got to be it! Merritt is nuts, but she’s smart. There’s no way she’d go to all of this trouble, risk her job even, just to separate Cooper and me after we’d finally found each other. I mean why would she be that cruel to her own twin brother? She wouldn’t. Probably her plan was always to send him back here. The likelihood is she just wants to spend a little more time with him before she has to say goodbye again.

“I know you can hear me,” I cry into the air. “I know your game!”

The elderly woman in the bed next to me leans forward, peering at me through thick glasses. “Why yes, it’s gin rummy, dear. Do you have cards? Shall we play?”

“Maybe later.” I smile, leaning back onto my pillow and shaking my head, a small, relieved chuckle escaping me. I can wait. I’ve waited this long to feel anything other than rubbish. If waiting another week or two is all that I need to do to get Cooper back, then I will happily do it.



* * *





It takes another three days of treatment and monitoring before I’m given permission to return home. Now that I’m certain it’s only a matter of time until Cooper returns, my mood has lifted. Well, as much as one’s mood can lift when they’ve recently died twice and their new favourite person is in a coma.

Leanne has generously promised me that she will drive me back to the hospital every morning so that I can continue to visit Cooper, hold his hand, and keep him up to date on everything that’s been going on. I don’t know if he can hear me. I expect he’s gallivanting around Evermore with Merritt before he returns back to Earth. But I talk anyway.

I’m wheeled down to the front entrance of the hospital by a kindly porter. Outside I spot Aled and Frida and Leanne and Jan, and, weirdly, Flashy Tom from The Orchestra Pit. They’re standing in a little group arguing with each other.

Thanking the porter, I take my crutches and hop over to them.

“Hiya,” I say, noticing that even in the one week that I’ve been stuck inside the hospital, the air has cooled into a far more comfortable temperature. “Why are there so many of you?”

Aled turns to me, teeth gritted. “I said on the WhatsApp group that I was coming, but it turns out that Leanne didn’t check her notifications.”

“I’m busy!” Leanne says. “And I don’t see you scolding Frida or Flashy Tom. They’re also here because they didn’t see your WhatsApp message in time.”

“A WhatsApp group? What are you talking about?” I ask, wobbling on my crutches before Leanne takes one arm and Frida the other.

“Our Delphie group,” Jan says, as if the fact that there is a WhatsApp group named after me is entirely normal. “We’ve been using it to co-ordinate visits. But it turns out there was a mix-up this morning about who was supposed to pick you up.”

“A mix-up? Or a lack of attention?” Aled mutters, his cheeks pinkening.

Leanne snipes back at him, to which Frida calmly tells her not to speak to him that way. Jan rolls her eyes at me.

“You have too many friends,” she says, patting me on the shoulder before leading me and my crutches to her own car while the rest of them continue to bicker.

I smile, a gratifying sensation blooming in my chest and warming my whole body.

Too many friends.

What a concept.



* * *





When we reach my building, I’m startled by a figure in a black shirt and baseball cap facing my front door.

“Cooper?” I gasp, my breath catching with delight.